Here's a piece from Steve Sanchez. It's a excerpt from his midterm paper on Hereditary Evil.
Steve explains the concept of hereditary evil better than I can, so I'll just let you read the paper for yourself and taking away from it what you will.
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On the level of individual spiritual development, an adolescent person is transitioning from childhood to adulthood. The life of innocence is going away and they must begin to deal with the hereditary inclinations toward evil that are now beginning to be activated. This corresponds to the awakening of rational cognition in regards to moral decision-making, and formation of identity. Sometimes mistakes are made, and bad decisions are acted on. The parent will of course need to give guidance, and sometimes they have to let the young person learn on their own.
A major theme I see, in regard to an adolescent, or any individual, has to do with the constant tension and striving to bring one’s externals into harmony with internals. This is a great and tough lesson to pay attention to as a practical message. Maclagan writes: “The great lesson that we have all to learn from the study of this section is, habitually, to endeavor, while we are in this world, to bring our outward life as far as we possibly can into harmony with our internal life”.
When Maclagan writes, “Of the delusions of falsities from interior evil, of the corrupted principles in which there is yet something of good”, he is interpreting the phrase, ‘Ameleks who dwell in the south’. According to Swedenborg the Amelaks represent those who no longer care to examine themselves, but delight in deceiving and harming the soul of others. He writes:
They who are in this evil do not attack the truths of faith, but the goods of faith; for they act by means of depraved affections, whereby they pervert good thoughts. Because they are of such a nature, their hells are completely separated from the hells of evil spirits, insomuch that they have scarcely any communication, and this for the reason that they may be separated from the men of the spiritual church; for if they were to flow in from their hells, it would be all over with the man of that church, because they would act in the most hidden manner into his conscience and would pervert it, and this by the breathing in of depraved affections. These infernal genii never attack a man openly, nor when he is capable of vigorous resistance; but when it appears that a man is falling so as to yield, they are then suddenly at hand, and push him on to a complete fall. This too is represented by the fact that Amalek now fell upon Israel; and also afterward, when the sons of Israel had set themselves in opposition to Jehovah, and were afraid of the nations in the land of Canaan (AC 8593).
The kind of evil Swedenborg is talking aboutseems to be very severe and is difficult to regenerate. In ourselves it needs to be identified, resisted, and deeply repented for. In others, it needs to be identified and avoided, or if possible held in check. I have encountered people like this in life who use ‘the delusions of falsity’ to manipulate people. The awareness of severe evil like this and how it operates is an intense lesson in life. I have a ‘for instance’ in regard to this. The leader of the religious group I was in was of this nature. He was a master at manipulating, and profoundly deceptive. This is an important awareness because, as Swedenborg says, it is the constant effort of such people to hide what they are really seeking to do. Their deception is much more persuasive and sustainable when the victim believes they are good. It is easy to see evil behavior in the actions of extreme terrorists, but it is much more difficult in those who seem upstanding in society.
For instance, the cult leader always named or addressed intense personal or group issues first. Most people are afraid or sensitive about doing this so his skill at it is a powerful way of making a huge impact on a person’s mind and soul. He was not afraid to engage in conflict, intimidation, or scary thoughts. He was very demonstrative of powerful emotions like joy, acting-out, amusement, anger, and rage. He always grabbed the stage and claimed to act out what people secretly wanted to or feared to do the most themselves. In his speeches he constantly revealed people’s personal lives, publicly shaming them in front of the group. He made himself the central hub of all relationships, and thereby manipulated all romantic relationships, putting people together and tearing them apart. In return for total dedication he promised that his followers could become like him. This was real, severe evil, under the guise of good.
The cult leader fulfilled in people what psychologists called a ‘salvation fantasy’. Salvation fantasy is said to a big part of the emotional appeal that inspired the hippy movement. The leader claimed to be a master of the ‘mystery teachings’, which promised to give a unique and elite connection to God. If we didn’t execute the teaching to his satisfaction then we were in danger of a horrible fate in hell. The strange thing was he used Swedenborg’s writing to make himself look enlightened. All of these things are examples, I believe, of what Maclagan calls the ‘delusions of falsity’.
One of the essential messages to learn is the necessity of self-examination. This takes a great deal of self-discipline, honesty, and a desire to be led by the Lord. For instance, in my own experience, writing, Spiritual Perversion, was a great experience of self-examination and therapy. I had to delve deep into memory and relive experiences in order to present the whole picture. The process was like mining a rich vein of gold; I was compelled to follow the veins of deception, fully expose them and thereby take charge of it. I didn’t know it at the time, but in hindsight I could see that God was with me guiding the process the whole time, and this perception brought me into greater relationship with Him. From this kind of therapeutic writing I realized that thought is rooted in feeling and affection, because as I felt and explored my feelings about a particular situation, a rush of ideas and memories came to me. I remembered all kinds of dialogue and important detail. I also saw that the evil attached to thoughts and feelings has all kinds of filters designed to protect it from detection. Revealing the depth of the story and forming it into art was essential to healing trauma and making myself whole. I think this kind awareness is of great value for religion and people of faith, because the psychological detail of how to heal the psyche is often wanting.
For instance, one of the pitfalls of religion is that we are vulnerable to fall into a mentality of being ‘goody, goody’, ‘perfect’, or indulge in spiritual pride over what we ‘know’. By doing so we are concreting over our shadow. The Amekelites probably represent people who have done this. To do so leads to psychological suffocation; it is a real psychological danger because the personality can lose its wholeness and vitality, like the Star trek episode when they were separated from their ‘Id’ self, or like the psychotic Church Lady character on Saturday Night live. In Buddhism one develops the skill of being mindful, and a major component of it is to be honest with ourselves; this goes hand in hand with a humble outlook. Making art can potentially serve the same purpose. When I wrote Spiritual Perversion I felt compelled to be completely honest. I couldn’t stop from writing a scene because it was embarrassing or humiliating. Art, and Buddhism, have pitfalls of their own, but they can serve us psychologically in a way that religion sometimes misses.
This brings out a major theme in the scripture in question, that is, if evil is left trapped in the psyche unexamined and unseen, it becomes like poison.
Now let’s look at an example on an individual level of the consequences of not regenerating hereditary evil. Here is a story that may serve as a good example: A friend came to me with a problem; he told me the story of how his wife and him had let his wife’s sister and her daughter move-in to live with them. His wife’s sister had been having financial problems for a long time. It quickly became appear that the 14-year-old daughter had some behavioral problems. She was getting F’s in school, and wouldn’t cooperate with guidance from adults. They found out she was smoking cigarettes, doing drugs, and heavily involved in sex chat on the Internet. A big part of the problem was that her mother would not stand up to her, but coddled her, and ignored it all. The daughter attempted suicide and was put in a rehab facility. When she came out, she asked to go back in and was allowed. She came out and wanted to go back in again. But there seemed to be no effect on her attitude. The problem for my friend was that when he made rules for the house and tried to help in her school work, he got grief not only with the girl, but with his wife, his wife’s sister, and their mother for trying to straighten things up. This was causing major tension in their marriage and they came to agree that they needed to ask the sister and daughter to leave. My friend decided to write a letter to the girls councilor at school, so that she might get into a more structured school that could lead to a new pattern in her life.
Now, this is what he said too me about why he took action, “This whole situation was driving me to distraction, but I could not face God and have him ask me, why didn’t you help that girl when you had a chance; I had to do something”.
The mother in this story may serve as an example of not facing the situation, and thereby letting hereditary evil ‘ride’. In the context I have presented, the adolescent daughter remains in ignorance, subject to the forces of hereditary evil, and its inherent tendency to protect itself to exposure and elimination. The mother seems to be complicit with this. My friend, on the other hand, by listening to God seeks to take action that can ‘regenerate’ the situation.
Another example that demonstrates some of the dynamics of hereditary evil, and how it can be potentially regenerated, has to do with the genogram. In seminary we are asked to interview our family members and draw up a genogram. This means putting together the story of one’s parents and one’s siblings, the story of our grand parents and their siblings, and so on. We look for patterns in these stories, and the impact they may have on our own lives. This was an eye opening experience for me. In my family there were significant themes of alcoholism, emotional cut-offs, mental disturbances, attempted suicides, and loss of faith. There was also significant achievement, perseverance, and acts of self-sacrifice. Understanding the stories of emotional trauma in my parent’s life was very important to understanding the traumas I suffered. The process of interviewing my parents in the way we were taught was a big part of the healing, because it afforded the chance to develop a certain amount of skill at re-orienting the relationship. By this I mean I was able in some measure to objectify my family role, and move out of it into a more mature identity. Most of all, it was powerful to observe the similar patterns of thought, feeling, and trauma that had a marked tendency to move downward in despair. I was able to see to a certain degree how these forces operated in my psyche. I realized I didn’t have to identify with being them. They were influences, but not I.
The experiences I have been describing all have to do with bringing the external and internal of our soul into a greater measure of harmony. It takes work, intention and skill.
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